On winter's coldest days, this classic Kashmiri coat offers warmth — and wisdom

Goats and Soda On winter's coldest days, this classic Kashmiri coat offers warmth — and wisdom December 21, 2025 7:26 AM ET By Junaid Nabi A man carries a child in his Kashmiri pheran, a traditional winter coat that gives warmth during the coldest days of winter. A pot of embers carried beneath the fabric adds to the comfort. Tauseef Mustafa/AFP/via Getty Images hide caption toggle caption Tauseef Mustafa/AFP/via Getty Images When I was growing up in Kashmir, my grandfather would hide me inside his pheran on the coldest days of winter. Bundled together beneath the loose woolen robe, he would tell me stories about Kashmir's Chillai Kalan — the 40 harshest days of the year when temperatures plunge below freezing and snow blankets the valley. The phrase is derived from the Persian: Chillai means 40 days and Kalan means grand. I loved winter, loved those days tucked against his chest, but I did not yet understand what he was teaching me: that we must not despair when conditions turn harsh, because difficulty creates what we need to flourish. The brutal cold of Chillai Kalan , he explained, brings the heavy snowfall that feeds our rivers through spring and summer. Without winter's severity, there is no abundance. On December 21, Kashmiris around the world will celebrate World Pheran Day , marking the first of the bitter days that define Chillai Kalan . The pheran (also derived from the Persian, meaning cloak) — that loose woolen robe my grandfather wrapped around both of us — represents more than warmth. It is a testament to ingenuity born from necessity, typically paired with a kangri , an earthen pot of embers carried beneath the fabric. My ancestors didn't wait for someone from elsewhere to solve their problems. They looked at what they had and engineered solutions that worked. I think about this often now, working in global health, where we talk endlessly about innovation and technology. We speak of artificial intelligence as if it were a panacea, capable of revolutionizing health care delivery in the world's most under-resourced communities. And perhaps it can. But watching how quickly we deploy sophisticated algorithms into contexts we barely understand, I am reminded of something crucial: The people living through harsh conditions already know things global health innovators don't. They have been solving their problems long before we arrived with our solutions. Take Rwanda, where Babyl has become the largest digital health service provider since launching in 2016. A private enterprise that's partnered with the government, this platform delivers more than 5,000 virtual consultations daily, has registered over two million users, and completed more than 1.2 million consultations. It uses machine learning to interact with users for triage and connects rural Rwandans to doctors via their mobile phones. Like the pheran that worked with materials Kashmiris already had — wool and embers — Babyl succeeded by working with the technology people in Rwanda already possessed. Babyl doesn't require smartphones or high-speed internet. It runs on SMS and...

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